Yaounde Conference: All United To Tackle Pressing African Stakes

 The Yaounde continental conference on African integration is taking place at the moment the continent  is facing major political, security and socio-economic challenges.

“The very future, the very existence of Africa is at stake. We have a globalised world and Africa is being left behind.” These are words with which the Deputy Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Kwesi Quartey described the current stakes staring Africa during the opening ceremony of the continental conference in Yaounde on August 22, 2017. It is organized under the theme, “The issue of political and socio-economic integration of the African continent : the role of the Pan-African Parliament.” 
Kwesi Quartey further painted the picture of the continent’s demise when he said, “You find the African children seeking to cross the Sahara on foot, seeking to swim across the Mediterranean Sea, getting drown and trying to find an eldorado in Europe that does not want them.” Africa, he said, represents a paradox  as the continent has all the wealth but remains poor.
The President of Cameroon’s Senate, Marcel Niat Njifenji who chaired the opening ceremony of the conference as personal representative of President Paul Biya further circumscribed the context within which the conference was taking place. He said, “Our conference opens today within an international context marked by hotbeds of conflict and terrorist attacks which, unfortunately, do not spare our continent.” Corroborating the Senate President, the President of the Pan African Parliament, Hon. Roger Nkodo Dang said, Africa is hit by  terrorists like Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin region, jihadists in Mali,  climate change with the current floods in Sierra Leone as living examples, a series of humanitarian, social, economic and political crises. Africa is still suffering from the fragmentation caused  by colonialists, hence the existence of many integration barriers which constitute speed brakes to the continent’s development...